


The Fully Sick Adventures of Dende and The Supreme Kai

by galaxypatrol



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Introspection, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-04
Updated: 2015-08-04
Packaged: 2018-04-12 23:01:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4497996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galaxypatrol/pseuds/galaxypatrol
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shin has booked The Fellowship of The Strings a gig at a bat mitzvah, but Dende is worried Gohan cares more about homework than rocking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Fellowship of The Strings

Dende stood at the edge of his lookout, gazing down upon all of creation. Gohan was yet to reconsider his proposal, and the Supreme Kai was beginning to get antsy. It was a Wednesday. He faintly registered the sounds of Goten behind him, as he struggled to load all their gear into their broken down old touring van. They only had until noon tomorrow to convince Gohan to embrace his destiny.

“Can’t we just fly down?” Goten asked, sounding breathless from his effort.

“Do what you want,” replied Shin, slamming the pedal to the metal and driving over the edge and into the ether.

Dende sighed and mentally steeled himself for the task ahead. It was time.

\---

Gohan wished he could be surprised when he heard the opening notes of Toto’s seminal classic _‘Africa’_ drifting through his window on the summer breeze. Unfortunately for him, this was the third time this week his study session had been interrupted in this exact fashion.

“What was that?” Videl asked, her voice somewhat distorted by the unreliable performance of Skype. She looked alarmed and slightly concerned – and perhaps intrigued? “Is someone _wooing_ you?”

“No,” Gohan said quickly, hovering his mouse over the ‘disconnect’ button.

“Gohan,” came the dulcet prepubescent tones of his tween brother, “Come down here!”

“Is that your brother?” Videl asked, “Is that your brother playing a concert on your front lawn?”

“It’s probably just the TV,” Gohan said, shooting a furtive glance over at his window, only to see the Supreme Kai looming.

“ _It’s gonna take a lot to get me away from you_ ,” he whispered tenderly.

“You don’t have a TV,” Videl pointed out, as Gohan began to tremble, out of fear and loathing. He sighed, and struggled to find the words Videl deserved to hear a long time ago.

“There are lots of things you don’t know about me,” he said, making sure that his brow was creased in heroic sacrifice, “But there may come a day when I can finally tell you everything.”

“Um, what?” Videl said, lifting her eyebrow at him, “We have a test like tomorrow morning.”

“And I can only pray you’ll be waiting for me on the other side,” Gohan whispered softly, “Goodbye, Videl. You were the one.”

Videl’s expression was agonised when he disconnected from the Skype chat, but Gohan had to gird his heart for the task ahead. There would be much to sacrifice, and much pain to endure.

“ _I BLESS THE RAINS DOWN IN AFRICA,”_ Shin was meanwhile shrieking.

“Gohan, come down here!” Dende’s voice came imploringly, “Shin booked us a gig at a bat mitzvah! A little girl’s special day hangs in the balance!”

Gohan climbed out the window, his heart heavy. He closed it behind him. “Look, guys,” he said, “We’ve been friends for years now.”

Dende nodded approvingly. Shin seemed to consider his words. Goten’s eyes lit up with the kind of delight only children are capable of experiencing.

“But I just can’t devote the same amount of time to The Fellowship of The Strings as I did over summer break,” Gohan continued, “I’ve got an exam in the morning. You guys will just have to play the show without me. The show must go on.”

Goten’s eyes filled with tears. “But,” he said, his voice taking on a tearful tremble, “I was gonna roadie. I loaded the van. It’s always been my dream to be a roadie!”

Gohan took a few patient breaths. “Three days ago it was your dream to go to Space Camp,” he said, admonishingly.

This was a sore subject within the Son family. Chi-Chi had forbade it, given the horrible luck the men in her life seemed to court in space.

“That was until that blood traitor Trunks went without me!” Goten shrieked, kicking a rock that lay at his feet straight through a tree. “He was my _BROTHER!_ ”

“He was _not_ your brother,” Gohan scolded him, “And in this family we don’t call our friends blood traitors, young man!”

“This is my family now!” Goten cried, gesturing furiously at the two gods beside him, “The Fellowship of The Strings!”

“As long as we’re absolutely clear that you’re not actually a part of the Fellowship,” Shin interjected, earning himself a hush from Dende.

“Look, I’m sorry, guys,” said Gohan, “But I can’t do this. There’s more to my life than the Fellowship.” He turned to go, ignoring the burning sting of tears in his eyes.

Shin played a threatening chord on his synthesiser. He wasn’t so sure that they needed Gohan anymore, but he couldn’t live knowing what he knew.

“What happened to you, Gohan?” Dende asked, his voice hushed, yet strong, unwavering, the voice of a god. “You used to be cool.”

Gohan paused, “I _am_ cool,” he said, and then quieter, to himself, “ _Learning is cool_.”

“No, you’re not, Gohan,” Dende pursued, “You used to go on adventures. You used to be someone. You used to _own a dragon._ Now you just sit in your ivory tower, with your elitism and your books.” He now shook his head in disgust. “But mark my words, Gohan – the proletariat will rise.”

“My parents farm turnips!” Gohan cried, refusing to accept these accusations of bourgeois.

“Whatever, Ox Prince,” Dende replied, placing his arm on Shin’s shoulder and turning him away from this sorry sight, “Let’s go, guys. A little girl is accepting her religious and cultural responsibilities and I, for one, intend to be there.”

 With a final, mournful glance at his brother, Goten solemnly followed Shin and Dende back to the van, clambering in through the rear doors with tears streaming down his face, ready for another dangerous ride amongst the unsecured equipment. This was his life now. Even if he couldn’t go into space, there was another way to live amongst stars.


	2. Return of The Ox Prince

Much to Gohan’s dismay, by the time he’d returned to his computer, Videl had long since disconnected from Skype, leaving him to taste the bitter residue of forsaken dreams alone. Gohan had been raised on tales of sacrifice for the greater good – his father, his inspiration, and yet, what was the point of refusing his band if the girl he _kind of liked_ didn’t _kind of like_ him in return?

“Is a sacrifice made in vain still a sacrifice?” he asked aloud of the empty room, as desolate as his soul.

There was no response. Gohan returned to his textbooks, opening his page to quadratic equations that knew nothing of the loss he felt deep within his soul, if there was such a thing. He wondered briefly if he had any pot left.

“Gohan!” chimed his mother through his closed door, “How’s the study date going? The study date with your incredibly rich girlfriend?”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” said Gohan, with a pang of regret and longing, “The qualitative assessment of relationships is subjective and ultimately meaningless. Videl and I are individuals, so how could I possibly know how ‘we’ are doing?”

There was not a reply for a considerable period of silence.

“Gohan,” his mother sounded resigned, defeated, “Are you philosophising again?”

Gohan didn’t answer, choosing instead to close his textbook and forsake Pythagorean theorems, turning his attention to STARFM as he turned his radio on. The wail of an impassioned, desperate guitar reached his ears, and he paused, recalling dully the pain and beauty of the music inside him.

“ _She said we gotta hold on,_ ” came the insurgent tones of Jon Bon Jovi over the airwaves, as though he was singing to Gohan and Gohan alone, “ _To what we got! It doesn’t make a difference if we make it or not!”_

Gohan pondered this, and found himself nodding in silent assent.

“ _We got each other, and that’s a lot, for love,”_ continued Jon Bon Jovi, speaking directly to Gohan from the year 1986, “ _We’ll give it a shot!”_

“ _Whoa,”_ whispered Gohan to himself, raising a hand to his face, finding it wet with the stain of tears, “ _We’re halfway there.”_

An insistent knock at his door. “Gohan!” came his mother’s voice, “Have you seen your brother? He’s been in a mood since his fight with Trunks about Space Camp.”

Gohan’s thoughts turned then to his brother, his band – both so young and approaching crossroads of their lives. Fitting, thought Gohan, that they were on their way to a bat mitzvah.

Without him.

“Gohan?” his mother said again, now questioning, almost hesitant.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” said Gohan, getting to his feet, “I have to go.”

There was a dangerous pause. “Go where?” His mother was turning the knob of his bedroom door to and fro, only to find it locked – futile, Gohan thought, much like life itself.

“Where I should have been all along,” Gohan whispered, his mother having no chance of overhearing him as the song on the radio had reached its climactic guitar solo, piercing the depths of his very heart. He cranked the stereo to 60, the resonance of the guitar shaking his small house to its foundations as he departed through the window and into the night.

_“YOU LIVE FOR THE FIGHT WHEN IT’S ALL THAT YOU GOT!”_ surmised the radio, as Chi-Chi began to wail.

 

 

“Check, check one,” Goten said into mic two, his voice subdued, unamplified by the unsuccessful connection.

Shin approached, squinting down at the leads. He reached down to pick up the lead for mic two, finding it unattached, lost in the world. “And _what,_ ” he hissed, “Do you call _this?_ ”

Goten frantically checked his cords. “I,” he offered, before attempting once again to force an HDMI cable into a USB 2.0 port. “Check, check two!” he whispered frantically, his voice swallowed by the soothing sounds of Yiddish from behind the curtain that obscured the main stage from the audience, as the young girl – now becoming a woman – read from the Torah.

Shin clapped sharply, mere inches from his face. “Make it work,” he commanded, “Or you won’t be getting your drink tickets.” His eyes narrowed, and he hissed, “ _None of us will be getting our drink tickets_.”

“I’m twelve years old,” Goten reminded him, helpfully.

Shin stared at him with the eyes of a being to whom time had lost all significance. Goten eventually relented, and returned his attention to the mechanics of setting up the audio-visual component of the performance.

Dende clucked his tongue in disapproval. “Don’t be so hard on him,” he said, “We’re doing this for the music, not for the drink tickets.” He privately reflected on the fact that he only drank water, anyway, and that water was free – with or without drink tickets.

Shin belligerently caused a disturbance by seizing the stand of mic two and snapping it over his knee, hurling one of the fragments like a javelin in Goten’s general direction. “What does it even _matter?_ ” he cried, “The Fellowship is _broken!_ We have no lead singer!”

He wished they had killed Gohan when they had the chance – a clean break, a new beginning.

“Take heart, my friend,” said Dende, playing an encouraging slap bass riff, unfortunately limited by the fact that Goten was yet to plug his instrument into the amplifier, “It is better to have played and lost than not to have played at all.”

Shin privately thought that Dende could shut the fuck up, and was about to tell him so, but was rudely interrupted by the discordant sounds of Goten finally figuring out where to plug mic two into, almost deafening him, and the entire attendance of the bat mitzvah, with the harrowing screech of feedback.

“ _I did it!”_ Goten jubilated to an audience of no one. Dende was incapacitated, clutching his ears and curled into a helpless ball over his bass, and Shin couldn’t give a shit.

“Oh yeah?” snapped Shin in retaliation, “You set up that data projector yet?”

Goten stared at him in total, nauseating non-comprehension.

“Then how do you expect to screen that slideshow of transformative moments?” Shin demanded, referring to the carefully chosen photographs of birds in flight, waves breaking upon the sand, and the earth completing a rotation around the sun, taken from Getty images with the watermark inexpertly blurred out by a novice Photoshop user, “ _Huh? You tell me.”_

Goten was already busying himself with frantically attempting to connect the data projector, but wireless connectivity was a skill he was yet to master as the son of a turnip farmer. Dende, ears still ringing, sighed as he walked over to his amp to plug his bass in.

“What are you doing,” demanded Shin, “That’s _his_ job.”

“I figure he could use a break,” replied Dende, playing repetitive slap riffs to warm up – he only knew a handful of chords.

“Always such a fucking hero,” hissed Shin, setting up another microphone stand, only to snap it over his knee again.

 

 

Gohan, meanwhile, watched civilisation pass by below him as he cruised through the sky on Nimbus. He had uncovered the last of his stash, and was feeling much more certain of his place in the world. He was sitting on a cloud, and that was fine.

“ _It’s my life,”_ he whispered around a mouthful of smoke, “ _And it’s now or never.”_ He paused for dramatic effect, though no one could hear him. “ _I ain’t gonna live forever._ ” He thought of his father. He thought of the cloud.

He thought of the guitar he forgot to bring from his room.

 

 

The hour drew near. The data projector had been set up, and was now replaying a loop of a mixture of poignant images and default clip art, joined in harmony by factory-standard transitions such as star wipes and pixellated dissolves.

Dende still had his doubts about the reserve of sampled voice recordings that Shin had stored on his synthesiser, poised to be unleashed on this unsuspecting Orthodox crowd. However, there were few other options for this suddenly two-piece band, now lacking a lead singer after the untimely desertion of their brother. He had offered, with no ego, to replace Gohan, even temporarily, but Shin had expressed slight misgivings about the proposition.

“I would rather fucking kill everyone in this building than let them hear you lead this band,” Shin had replied, an ominous chord emanating from his finally plugged in synthesiser.

“Well,” Dende had replied, his pride slightly wounded, “I guess that settles it.”

He turned his mind once again to the collection of voice recordings Shin had amassed over the years, spanning from Winston Churchill’s address to the nation to Taylor Swift’s interrupted acceptance speech. He figured there would probably be something that would appeal to the crowd in front of him.

He glanced at Shin, knowing the time was at hand. The crowd was milling about in front of them – he could hear their earnest whispering from beyond the curtain, their final defence in their new and vulnerable state with their latest line-up.

It was time.

Dende offered Shin a solemn nod. The warm and crisp sound of synthesised guitar chords filled the air, and Dende allowed himself a brief moment of respite to ponder the absences in their lives – and the possibilities that awaited them. He joined his bandmate, providing the much-needed rhythm section for the song, as the curtain opened at last, on their lives and legacy, and they were faced with the expectant eyes of aunts and uncles, cousins and second cousins.

He saw Shin’s finger hovering over the button that would deploy a drum and bass remix of Buzz Aldrin’s moon landing.

It was time to sink or swim.

“ _To everything-_ ” he sang into the microphone, fulfilling his role as back-up vocalist, his voice trembling on the chasm of possibility.

The doors at the back of the room burst open with a terrific _boom_. Dende jerked in surprise, almost losing his place in the song, as he raised his head to the source of the sound.

_“Turn! Turn! Turn!”_ came the sweet and familiar tenor he knew so well, and he heard before he saw Gohan returning to them, the prodigal son, haloed by a corona of light.

He turned his tearful gaze to Shin as he was momentarily overcome with emotion, to see his synth player look almost disappointed as he withdrew his finger from the supplementary keyboard, closing the book on the sweet and optimistic words of Buzz Aldrin forever.

As Gohan moved through the crowd to join them on the stage, Dende found himself reflecting upon the timeless value of the lyrics that had been painstakingly selected for this crowd to celebrate the coming of age of this young lady before them.

_“A time to gain, a time to lose! A time to rend, a time to sew! A time for love, a time for hate! A time for peace, I swear it’s not too late!”_ At the last line, Dende locked eyes with Gohan. It was a moment that Dende would often reflect upon, would cherish ‘til the end of his days. He remembered the first time he had met this young man, his brother in everything but blood – he considered the genocide of his people, his rebirth, his ascension to godhood. For that brief moment, maybe the both of them understood that where was, indeed, a time for everything under the sun - and for a moment, Dende was truly at peace.

As the final chords of the song dissolved into polite applause from the crowd, Dende moved to Gohan, and they embraced. He did not regret the harsh words that he had spoken to Gohan, but he was glad that he no longer felt that they were true.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“Don’t thank me,” replied Gohan, and it was then that Dende placed the familiar scent of smoke permeating from Gohan’s sweater vest, “Thank Bon Jovi.”

Dende was speechless, but his musings were interrupted as Shin prepared to move onto the next number.

“Hey, you guys like Run DMC? Sure you do!” Shin cried, break-dancing so suddenly that he knocked over his own synthesiser.

_“I can’t rap_!” Gohan hissed as he pulled away from Dende, feeling peculiarly as if he was on the verge of losing control over his life. The paranoia was beginning to set in.

“You _will_ ,” Shin replied, popping and locking aggressively towards him. As Gohan stared at him apprehensively, he spied Goten darting out onstage behind Shin to right the synthesiser, disappearing just as quickly as he had arrived.

Gohan backed away for every step that Shin took towards him, until he could back away no longer, lest he disappear offstage and disappoint the young woman whose special day it was, tainting her memories of the day forever.

“ _And it goes a little somethin’ like this!”_ Shin hissed. It was unclear whether this was for the benefit of the crowd or for Gohan. He returned to his synthesiser in the blink of an eye, as Gohan resigned himself to once again taking centre stage.

“ _Unemployment at a record high!”_ Gohan recited, a little tonelessly as he attempted to accurately capture the cynicism and funk of the proletariat, the crowd in front of him grooving with the polite awkwardness of a family gathering with minimal alcohol, “ _People coming, people going, people born to die!”_

He saw a bepaunched man in the crowd inelegantly doing the sprinkler.

“ _Don’t ask me, because I don’t know why!”_

He was aware of Dende’s enthusiastic but mediocre bass playing to his right, Shin’s somewhat out of place synthesised music to his left, and Goten hovering behind the amplifiers to the back of the stage, still riding the high of successfully righting the synthesiser that Shin had knocked over moments earlier.

“ _It’s like that – and that’s the way it is!”_

And Gohan supposed that it was.


End file.
